Looking Ahead to November 2, 2025

This is a first of the month Sunday so we will be celebrating Communion this week. If you are joining us via YouTube you are encouraged to have some bread and juice available so we can all eat and drink together.

Also the first Sunday of the month is a day when we at St. Paul's intentionally remember our Local Outreach Fund with designated gifts to support our neighbours.

With the beginning of November we start to prepare for the end of the Liturgical Year when we mark the Reign of Christ Sunday (Nov 23 this year). A month from now we will be into Advent and starting to prepare for Christmas. AS we lead into the Reign of Christ this year I encourage us to think of how Christ tends to turn our expectations and assumptions about the world upside down.

The Scripture Reading this week is Luke 6:20-26

The Sermon title is Upside Down Blessings

Early Thoughts: What does it mean to be blessed? Is Jesus seriously saying that the poor, the hungry, those who weep, those who are hated/reviled/excluded/defamed are the blessed ones? 

Last week I came upon a video which included a clip of Jordan Peterson responding to the version of the Beatitudes that we find in Matthew, a parallel passage to what we have here in Luke. In Matthew is where we find the familiar "Blessed are the meek" and "Blessed are the peacemakers" and Dr. Peterson was responding (in the clip which was presumably from a longer piece) to the idea that the meek and humble are blessed. Surely, he said, Jesus meant something else by meek -- his suggestion was those who had great power and strength but chose not to use it were the truly meek. The clip was spliced with a Biblical scholar who said that Peterson was clearly trying to renegotiate with what the text actually said to make it more palatable. In short, to make it fit with Peterson's assumptions about how the world should work.

But Jesus challenges our assumptions on a regular basis. Jesus is the one who tells us that the last shall be first and the our calling is to be servant-leaders. Jesus proclaims a kingdom that upends the way the world works, a kingdom where power is assigned differently, a kingdom which gives preference to those on the margins instead of those at the center.

In our world of late-stage capitalism we would think that Jesus has it all wrong in this combination of blessings and woes. Surely it is the rich, the well-fed, the praised who are truly blessed. Right?

What if we are wrong about the signs of being blessed? What if we are called to see the world with our head on the ground and our feet in the air? 

WHat does it really mean to be blessed?
--Gord